Tap the Boulevard is an SMU Football Blog, A Beer Blog, A Baseball Blog, A Music Blog, basically a blog about everything that makes life worth living. So sit back, relax, crack a cold one and enjoy our incoherent ramblings and gratuitous movie quotes.

Monday, September 8, 2008

Texas State Recap and Other Notes

See? All we had to do is be patient and June Jones would reward us with a win. Granted the win was over FCS team Texas State and the Mustang defense still allowed 36 points and 465 yards of offense, but a win is a win and I'll take it.

Bo Levi Mitchell passed for 370 yards, had no interceptions and 5 (yes five) TD passes. Emanuel Sanders and Aldrick Robinson both had over 100 yards receiving and 3 and 2 TD catches respectively. As Sanders said after the game "It's going to be scary when we get better". So as in sync as the offense looked on Saturday, there is still room for improvement. Bo is still overthrowing a little and his timing with some receivers (like Wilkerson) is a bit off, but that will come with time. Sanders and Robinson also made him look good on some catches that were thrown down by the hip or short, but I also noticed that Bo Levi was throwing it away from the defenders: either a Mustang was going to catch it or no one was for the most part. This is markedly different from the second half against Rice when Bo floated too many passes and allowed himself to get careless in his decision making. Let's hope he shows further improvement next week becuase Texas Tech's backs are on a different level than those of Texas State.

Another interesting development, was the use of Justin Willis as an option-running QB on a couple short yardage situations in the first half. Are the Mustangs going to do the vogue thing and start instituting a direct snap formation too? Time will tell. I certainly support the idea as Justin was always a better runner than passer.

All in all, a good performance by the Mustangs. The defense still has a long way to go, but we in Pony Nation should keep in mind that this defense was never meant to shut down the other team's offense. Tom Mason's defense is designed to make aggressive plays and either force turnovers or allow big plays. While turnovers are of course preferred, the general concept is that any play that gets the offense back on the field that much faster is acceptable. This is a different style of defense than what we as fans were used to under Phil Bennett, where the idea was to stop the other team in its tracks (with varying degrees of success as Bennett's 18-52 record demonstrates). This type of defense takes an adjustment of expectations by us the fans. Big plays will happen, but we have to have faith in our offense, and so by extension June Jones, to keep us in the game.

In other news, the Astros took 2 of 3 from the Rockies over the weekend and are only 6 back in the Wild Card race. Hunter Pence continued his torrid pace, hitting his 21st home run on Saturday and Roy Oswalt threw a one hitter the same night. The bad news: Brandon Backe and Wandy Rodriguez both injured themselves. Better to have this happen after September callups when the roster is at 40 players I suppose, but it is still a rough break.

I also tried with Ty a beer I'd never had before call Steam Engine Amber. It proudly boasts on the can that it is the best American Style Amber Lager in the world. It had notes of fruit and an excellent nose to it. Very solid beer, but more research is necessary.

We'll have more entries this week as we face the spectre that is Texas Tech this weekend. Until then, go Mustangs and go Astros (and the Rangers too I guess).